The Local Church

The hungry orphans from the local community.

The chicken feed.

The chicken coop.

The baby chicks.

The teenage chicks.

The chickens to sell and to lay eggs.

The money.

The crops.

The food.

The fed orphans.

The local church.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  James 1:27

Walk in Love

Africa, Day 1

It is 2:48 a.m. I have been awake for 25 minutes now, tossing and turning.  My body thinks it should be up doing instead of down resting.  I am simultaneously cold and hot.  Bug noises rise and fall outside and I remember Michigan summers with my bedroom window cracked open to the warm air.  My heart and mind can’t quite hold the fullness of the day that has passed, every moment of it overflowing with life.  After the very long plane journey, I arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa at 7:30 a.m.  I said goodbye to my seatmate Bruce, a white Zimbabwean who now lives in Calgary, Canada, and with whom I shared 12 hours in the sky running from London to South Africa.

Straight from the airport, I went with my pastor friend Edgar to the home of a man named Mike.  Two little dogs greeted us and the rich earthiness of the summer air nearly took my breath away.  At home, the warmth of this sun will be veiled for months.  Mike and his wife run a ministry called Dumpsite.  Each Saturday morning, they make a bowl of meat, rice, and vegetables for, on average, 200 people who live on a large landfill, collecting, sorting, and then selling garbage scraps and recyclables.  They also make two large tubs of juice.  Edgar and I helped load the bowls of food into a van along with the juice and black plastic bags filled with shoes and clothes.

Mike explained that when we arrived at the dump, he would preach the gospel and then everyone would gather in groups of ten.  Then, we would give each group a palate of food bowls, a black plastic bag, and a cup of juice.  Distributing the food, drink and clothes this way creates community and accountability, preventing line-jumping, pushing to the front.

We followed Mike and his team in their van to the dumpsite where people had already started to gather.  Mostly women and little children.  They gathered in a semi-circle around the van the massive dump looming large in the background.

Mike shouts praises to God and those gathered echo his praises.  He passes out a single sheet of paper to each person, which includes the text from Ecclesiastes 3:1-14, part of which promises that “God has made everything beautiful for its own time.  He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”  (v. 11)  This was quite a promise to contemplate among a crowd suffering from deep, abiding hunger, deathly sickness, chronic foot and belly pain.  God has made everything beautiful for its own time.  Has made.  Everything.  Beautiful.  I can’t help but wonder how any of this is beautiful, this aching hunger, this living amongst garbage, and this lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation.  I can only agree that I cannot see the whole scope of God’s work and it must not be time yet.  Mike tells the group that if any among them has AIDS, God loves them. If any among them has HIV, God loves them.  He tells them that though their pain and suffering is so great now, God has planted eternity in their heart and through belief in Christ, eternal, everlasting beauty is on the way.

After preaching his message and praying, Mike asks the people to disperse into groups and we hand out the food, drink and clothing.  After this is done, a line forms and Edgar explains that those in line had prayer requests for Mike.  Mike listens to each one, types each prayer into his mobile device, and then lays his hands on the shoulders, on the feet, on the stomach, on the eyes depending on the request.  He asks God to heal, to provide, to protect.  For some, he thanks God for answered prayer.  Mike will forward these prayer requests to a team and he and the team will pray for each person all week.  Next week, he will come and do this again. 

Next, we travel to the other side of the dump where hundreds of people have set up “homes” among the garbage.

Mike has brought us here, where he will distribute fresh vegetables and heavy-duty nails in an effort to keep the homes standing.  As we walk through this village, scraps of garbage, colorful plastic bottles and caps, and animal bones litter the ground.  We walk a winding path looking for residents to tell them we are here with nails and food.  Faces begin to appear in doorways and people come out to see us.  We shake hands and exchange names and greetings.  Their hands are warm and dry in mine.  They call out Mike’s name from afar, smiling broadly when they see he has come.  He touches them and asks them about their families.  One man approaches Mike and explains that he needs to see a doctor, pulling down his shirt over the shoulder revealing large red sores that he says cover his chest and back.  He has AIDS and it is eating him from the inside out.  The man looks at me and says he needs a doctor.  Another man staggers behind us, talking nonsense, younger men holding him up as he walks.  Mike says this man will die in a few days.   

“Many of them are drunk and have HIV and AIDS.  We cannot judge them.  We don’t know how it is to live here,” Mike says as we walk back to the van.  “I only can love them.”  By now, there are dozens following us to get the vegetables and nails.  As we walk, Mike shows me homes that have collapsed and not been built again.  “The person who lived here probably died and they just leave the home like this.”  There are two well-built structures that Mike raised money to have built for two elderly men so that they can live the remainder of their lives with protection from the rain and some amount of dignity.  I say my goodbyes to Mike and ask what will happen with the man who needs to see the doctor.  Without hesitation, he says “I will take him now.”  And suddenly I see the beauty.

Before I left home, my 11-year old daughter handed me a stack of letters she wrote for me to read while I am away, one for every other day.  When I return to my lodging after the visit to the dumpsite, I read today’s letter, in which she instructs me to read 2 John 6: “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.  As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”  This passage allows me to piece the day together and see how we can and so often do walk through life, and love only on the side, only when the opportunity to love finds us or arrests our movement.  But, in Mike, I see that to walk in love is a whole other thing.  It is to go where love is needed and provide it.  Where this need and this provision collide, there is the beautiful.

Justice, God's Way

I spent this past weekend in Bend, Oregon at an incredible conference called the Justice Conference.  I can hardly explain all that I came to understand there.  Here are four things:

1.              The local church is the hope of the world.  (This may sound familiar, see I Didn't Know Until I Knew).

2.              There are at least 1050 people who love God in a way that leads them to irrational love, self-sacrifice, and humility.

3.              The best thing to do with the best things you have is to give them away.

4.              Injustice is the norm.

The most important thing that happened, though, is that I came to a better, more palpable understanding of the Gospel.  And this understanding came in struggling with the idea of justice.  Something about it makes me queasy, uneasy, anxious.  This seems weird to say for a couple reasons. 

First, I am a lawyer.  And some might say that lawyers exist to promote justice.  Whether this is true I will save for another day. 

Second, justice seems pretty easy to get behind.  If someone asked me: what do you think about justice, I’d surely say: “I’m for it!”  I don’t know many people who would say they aren’t.  We do act in ways that undermine justice, either unintentionally, or in reckless disregard of the facts (to use a legal phrase).  Example: we demand goods (coffee, chocolate, clothes, etc.) cheap and fast.  This feeds the human-trafficking and sex-slavery industries.  Yeah, it really does.  As a concept, though, justice is hard not to support.  So what is my issue?  Why does justice talk rattle me?

In trying to answer this question, I reflected on the definitions provided at the conference. One speaker defined justice as “giving that which is due.”  Another: relationships that are in balance.  Another: “rendering to each person that which is his or her right.”  Another: people experiencing what they have a right to.  The dictionary says “rightfulness” or “lawfulness.”  No argument on any of these. 

I also attempted to examine the relationships between certain other concepts and justice.  In other words, what is the relationship between the Church and justice?  Jesus and justice?  Worth and justice?  Value and justice?  Rule of law and justice?  Love and justice?  Mercy and justice?  Grace and justice?  And then it hit me.  There are two sides of justice: the offender and the victim.  I realize this seems quite obvious, but it was this realization that led me to understand my anxiety about justice.  If justice means balance in a relationship and injustice means imbalance in a relationship, then to achieve justice, there must be a leveling.  The offender must be brought lower, or humbled, or even punished.  And it means that the victim must be lifted up, lifted out. 

The Justice Conference was about understanding justice, identifying injustice, and determining how to lift the victim up.  There was less discussion about the other side of the equation – the lowering, humbling, or punishing of the offender.  This is okay, I am not complaining, justice is a big topic.  But it is on this side of the equation that I came face to face with my anxiety about justice. 

What made me uneasy was that grace – a concept I cling to, rely upon, hang onto desperately – and justice, seem inconsistent or incompatible.  And what I need most of all is grace and forgiveness.  But does grace undermine justice?  Does it devalue the victim of injustice to forgive the offender?  Who has the right to forgive or give grace to an offender?  Only the victim?  Who has the right to impose punishment and sanction?  How exactly do these concepts fit together?  Did Christ’s message remove justice from the lexicon altogether and replace it with grace?  Very smart biblical scholars disagree about the answer to this question.  I don’t attempt to answer it here and not because I’m afraid to venture my view, but because this conceptual debate is not the source of my justice anxiety.

The source of my justice anxiety runs deeper.  You see, I don’t want justice, at least not in all circumstances.  If I am a victim of injustice, I want to be lifted up, lifted out.  In that circumstance, I want justice.  And where I see others subject to injustice, I want to lift them up and out.  But there is someone I have most offended.  There is one upon whom I have foisted immeasurable amounts of injustice.  There is one who has the ability to bring about the harshest, most terrifying rendering of justice.  There is one who has the best claim to punish me.  And from Him, I do not want my due.  I do not want justice under these circumstances.  It would be more than I could ever bear. Thus, my fear and anxiety about justice. 

Turns out, the most offended and most unjustly treated one, instead of giving me my due, forgave me.  The one who could punish me for all of eternity in ways that I could not imagine in my worst nightmare has cast my offenses, my transgressions, my injustices, as far as the east is from the west, buried them at the bottom of the sea.  The one who has the best claim to punish me, died a most gruesome and painful death for me.  All of this He did while I still sinned, while I still offended, while I continued to pour injustice upon Him.  Jesus Christ has leveled my previously unjust, imbalanced relationship with God; he has made it just by punishing himself, humbling himself, lowering himself, the innocent, instead of me, the offender.  This is the good news.  This is the Gospel.

Justice, God’s way.        

      

Finally, my takeaways.

I've gone through a long thought process since I've been back from Africa and have had time to think through all that I saw and heard and felt. I've looked at my photographs a dozen times to help me understand what my takeaways are, you know, how I can best describe the trip in a few sentences (close to impossible). Here are some I'm thinking about and the pictures that go with them.  What do you think?

1) The local church is the hope of the world.

Clean water.  The church being the church.

See last line on sign: Minister: All Believers. 

The church caring for orphans.

2)  Every one of us is important to God.  Shoes or no shoes, white skin or black skin, here or there.

3)  The Big Bang Theory simply doesn't make any sense once you look around.

4)  Pay attention to the journey, not just the destination.

5)  A great team makes all the difference.

6)  Don't eat just any piece of fruit you find on the ground.

7)  Warthog tastes like chicken.  Not really.  More like pig.

Before.

Marinated Warthog Fillet.  No one would order that!

After

8)  Don't ever take Tamiflu.  Long story.  No pictures.  

I Didn’t Know Until I Knew

On Saturday, our team flew from Lusaka to Livingstone for a two-day trip to see Victoria Falls and experience a day safari. Before we left, though, we went to George Complex, a community of 200,000 people near Lusaka. Many of the women and children there walk more than a mile everyday to get clean water. As a result of this long walk for water, most of these girls can’t go to school. They carry 20-liter containers on their heads and babies on their backs. Girls as young as 8 carry these containers. We visited that day because those who live near the Pentecostal Church in George Complex were receiving clean, safe water for the first time. A bore hole was donated by people from Willow Creek Community Church. This bore hole will serve about 1000-2000 people who live in the village. We met many of these people. Many were children. They were beautiful, with deep dark eyes and smiles you wouldn’t believe were possible.

There are things about these children that are different than the children we know. Many of them don’t have shoes. They wear clothes that are too big or too small, or clothes that are out of season. Many are orphans or have only one parent to care for them. At the most basic of comparisons, though, they are the same. A woman and her daughter stood near me. The mother asked if I would take a picture of her and her daughter. The daughter immediately became resistant, asking her mother why she would do this! How embarrassing! I asked her, “How old are you?” She said, “Seventeen.” I said, “Ah, I can see why you don’t want to be anywhere near your mother!” They both laughed so much they bent over. Not so different.



It was an incredible celebration. Government officials were present, pastors were present, community leaders were present. Families were there. Mothers, fathers, children. Once the bore hole was “commissioned” by the member of parliament who was there, the mothers and girls began to pump the water into buckets they had lined up. Fresh, clean water flooded out of the pump and we all danced and sang, praising God for what he had done through his church. I took hundreds of pictures of the water, the children, the mothers, the pastors, and our team.




The meaning of this didn’t really sink in until later that day, though.


As we flew to Livingstone, I reflected on my experiences in the last week. We had three days of incredible teaching in Ndola where we taught about the importance of demonstration of and proclamation of God’s kingdom. In other words, pastors should preach, yes, but they should inspire and equip their church should also be out in the community addressing the needs of the community, like feeding the hungry, caring for those with HIV/AIDS, loving orphans and the most vulnerable people. Without these things, there is, as Richard Stearns would say, a “hole in our gospel.” After the teaching, we went to the Ndola market, an experience that won’t ever fade from my mind. I wrote about it several days ago and it sparked so much heartbreak and questions, and yet, was a harvest for God’s work. The day after we went to the market, we visited the little children at the New Hope Christian Centre and sang I Love You Jesus Deep Down In My Heart. And the day after that, we went to the bore-hole dedication.

So, here is what I realized – my math at its best:
TEACHING + MARKET + BORE HOLE DEDICATION = THE LOCAL CHURCH IS THE HOPE OF THE WORLD

I had heard this. I thought I knew what it meant. . ..until I knew what it meant. You know?

I Love You Jesus Deep Down In My Heart

We had a day off from teaching today and were reminded of our love for Christ through experiences outside and inside of our team. First, we went to Chifubu, an area in Ndola to see the New Hope Christian Centre. The pastor and volunteers there care for 130 (or more) orphans, many of whom are HIV positive. They sang to us -- I Love You Jesus Deep Down In My Heart. They hugged us and touched our arms and legs. They seemed to want nothing more than to hold our hands and rub our skin. We played catch with a ball made out of plastic bags wrapped together. As a group of children stood around me, I asked them their ages and names. They stared up at me with big brown eyes. I asked them how they liked their new water system, that gave them clean water. We stood and took each other in. At one point, I asked them: "Who is Jesus?" They were silent, until one brave little girl said boldly: "He is God!" Then we sang together: I love you Jesus, deep down in my heart, I love you Jesus deep down in my heart.

After visiting the children, we drove 4 hours to Lusaka, which is South of Ndola. On the way, we passed goats, chickens, markets, speed bumps, restaurants, barber shops, farms, mud huts, people walking, people pushing bicycles loaded down with bags of charcoal, fuel stations, storefronts, police checkpoints. We paid 500 Kawacha to use the bathroom. We ate potato chips in the car. We stopped once because someone on our team wanted to buy peanuts from a woman selling them on the side of the road. He ended up with more peanuts than we could ever consume, even as a team. We stopped at a restaurant called The Fig Tree Cafe and got Coke and jumped on a trampoline. Yes, a trampoline. Got some video of that. Didn't really expect it. The long drive gave us an opportunity to get to know each other better as a team, to delve into deep questions and issues. What fun it was. The way God works in each individual's life is so unique.



The sun set in red again behind us as we pulled into Lusaka, a city of 3 million people. Lusaka is home to the University of Zambia, which has about 4000 students. We went to dinner at The Gondola, an Italian restaurant in Lusaka, where we ate pasta and pizza and ice cream cake for dessert. So far, what we have seen in Lusaka has been extreme diversity. Tomorrow, we go to a bore hole dedication. This will be a great morning of celebration. We will be wearing our new, hand-made African skirts, which the pastors in Ndola gave to us as a gift of gratitude. After that, we will fly to Livingstone, Zambia for a two-day trip to see Victoria Falls and into Botswana for a day-long safari. Please pray we can get back into Zambia from Botswana! Monday, we fly back to Lusaka for teaching Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The children in Chifubu summed up my feelings about these experiences today best: I love you Jesus deep down in my heart. I do.